February 1, 2011

1. We're having a blizzard. Classes canceled tomorrow. Meade's watching the basketball game on TV — the Badgers are playing downtown tonight. The announcer explains the cheer from the crowd: They just saw the news that classes are canceled tomorrow.

There were rolls served with butter and oil in three square glass dishes. The rolls were also squarish, with a very airy crumb and a shiny, leathery crust that was especially hard on the bottom. The butter was from Wolf Ridge (if we recall correctly) and came in two forms: slightly chilled and set, or powdered with tapioca flour. The oil was also served as a powder. Ann nailed it: the lipids were the Dippin' Dots of bread toppings.

3. Larry Kaufmann lambastes that play we were talking about the other day:
The dialogue between the lefty grad students and these conservative adversaries is also about as subtle as a flying mallet. These conversations are the heart of the play and lead to the murder of four of the five grotesque conservative thugs; only a seventeen-year old girl promoting abstinence is deemed too young to kill (kind of like not imposing the death penalty on minors, I suppose)....

Ann, the Badger's BB coach, Bo Rein, is a contemporary of mine and a fraternity brother (Phi Delta Theta) and was, although most don't remember, a star of the Wisc. football teams during his undergrad days in the 60s. I mention this only because their opponent tonight, Purdue, reminds me that Purdue was also successfully coached for many years by another ex-football player, Gene Keady. Not bad for two old ex-footballers, eh?

The actors may have added subtext to the movie. Rounded out the characters a bit.

You know what movie showed the "other side" in a sympathetic and thoughtful way? The last Rambo movie, IIRC. I'm talking about the pacifists he's hired to escort into Burma. Although they're dangerously naive, they're portrayed as brave and essentially good people with firm convictions. It's pretty darned sad, you know, when something as unintellectual as Rambo does a better job of giving alternative ideology a fair hearing than something like this "art" play.

Synova, reports are this storm system covers 70% of the country. It may indeed be the same blizzard in New Mexico as here in the Great Lakes region.

Here in Michigan, they're predicting a repeat of the blizzard of '78, which had local schools out for a week.

And as a fan of Bill Murray's greatest film, I'm highly amused by the timing of this storm. All I can say is: "Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today."

Yes Synova, isn't it "strange" that "un-intellectual" Sly Stallone manages to present a more realistic treatment of the realities of both today's totalitarian Burma and the world-view of modern Christian missionaries than his more "cosmopolitan" and "nuanced" lefty "intellectual" detractors?

Of course, Sly's REAL SIN in the eyes of the left was that his flic was both commercially successful as well as highly violent.

Yes Synova, isn't it "strange" that "un-intellectual" Sly Stallone manages to present a more realistic treatment of the realities of both today's totalitarian Burma and the world-view of modern Christian missionaries than his more "cosmopolitan" and "nuanced" lefty "intellectual" detractors?

Of course, Sly's REAL SIN in the eyes of the left was that his flic was both commercially successful as well as highly violent.

In light of Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional, Wisconsin’s attorney general, J. B. Van Hollen, has declared the Badger State free of any obligations imposed by the law. “Judge Vinson declared the health care law void and stated in his decision that a declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction,” Hollen says in a statement. “This means that, for Wisconsin, the federal health care law is dead — unless and until it is revived by an appellate court.”